Illinois sues Heart Check America over body scan sales

Sojkas

Nathan Weber/Pro Publica

Mark and Stephanie Sojka, of Bolingbrook, Ill., received health scanning through Heart Check America. It took several months of constant calling to receive their the results and they now believe to have been part of a scam involving more than $1,000 in expenses.

Mark and Stephanie Sojka, of Bolingbrook, Ill., received health scanning through Heart Check America. It took several months of constant calling to receive their the results and they now believe to have been part of a scam involving more than $1,000 in expenses. (Nathan Weber/Pro Publica)

In scores of consumer complaints, Heart Check America clients have accused the company of using pressure sales tactics inappropriate for a health care firm as it markets long-term medical imaging contracts costing thousands of dollars.

The Tinley Park-based company says scans from its Electron Beam Tomography machines can detect dangerous heart conditions and other health problems. But doctors say many people receiving the pitches most likely do not need the scans — they are under 40 and don't smoke, aren't overweight and have no family history or symptoms of heart disease.

Even for patients at risk of heart disease, some experts say, there is no medical evidence that the benefits of the tests outweigh potential dangers.

Regulators in Nevada and Colorado have cited one Heart Check America location and shuttered another, saying they lacked adequate medical supervision and had not taken proper precautions to avoid exposing patients to excessive radiation.

Now the company is under fire in Illinois, where its radio commercials have regularly pitched its imaging scans as a way to detect serious heart problems.

On Thursday, the Illinois attorney general's office filed a lawsuit accusing the owner and manager of Heart Check America of pressuring patients into purchasing pricey body scans that many did not need. Illinois officials say Sheila Haddad, the owner of the company, and her son, David, the manager, used "unfair and deceptive business practices" to manipulate consumers, possibly numbering in the thousands, into 10-year screening contracts costing up to $7,000, plus additional annual dues.

The complaint, filed in state court in Chicago, alleges a list of problems with Heart Check America's tactics:

•Multiple scans may not be medically appropriate, and sales were based on a false premise that early detection of disease always leads to better outcomes.

•The people selling the scans were not medically trained, and no medical provider evaluated patients before they received the scans.

•Consumers were not informed of risks, including radiation exposure, false-positive tests and a false sense of security from false-negative tests.

•Some test results were inaccurate.

Heart Check America officials did not respond to calls and emails asking for comment on the lawsuit. In an earlier interview, David Haddad acknowledged that Heart Check America has made missteps but blamed most of the recent patient complaints on a temporary backlog caused when the company switched to a new radiology group to read its scans.

He characterized any regulatory violations as minor and said the company was taking steps to bring all of its centers into compliance with government standards.

"People come back and say, 'Thank you, my wife will be (alive) because we found this,'" Haddad said. "I made my mom and sister go. People hug and kiss us goodbye in these clinics."

Customers in Illinois have described Heart Check America's sales tactics as misleading. "They are manipulating your health, your life and your future," said Elizabeth Lucki, of Niles, who signed a Heart Check America contract after a two-hour pitch, then spent two months fighting to cancel the deal, forfeiting the $1,990 she paid upfront. "This was like brainwashing."

Judy Blazek, a consumer named in the lawsuit and a former Heart Check America employee, paid the company $3,000 but never received her scan results, according to the suit. Blazek sought a refund but could not reach company officials, who had closed the company's sites in Tinley Park and Arlington Heights.

The complaint says another consumer, Kathleen Collins-Kuba, received a free heart scan and purchased a full-body scan for $600 on March 6. Later, her doctor told her the results had no medical relevance, and a follow-up CT scan performed at her physician's request indicated that Heart Check America's body scan was inaccurate. The hospital scan showed a kidney stone on one side of her body, but the Heart Check America scan showed it was on the other side, the complaint says.

Since June 2010, the Illinois attorney general's office has received 25 complaints against Heart Check America, according to the complaint.

Haddad has run into similar difficulties before. In 2007, Indiana's attorney general filed a lawsuit against companies run by Haddad and his wife, alleging they had deceived customers to get them to buy time shares, vacation packages and travel club memberships.

Heart Check America was founded in 1992 by California entrepreneur Bruce Friedman and another investor. Friedman had no background in health care, but he saw a business opportunity.

Some medical centers were using Electron Beam Tomography machines, a type of CT machine that takes rapid-fire images not blurred by the beating heart, but the technology was new and insurance did not usually cover preventive scans. Heart Check America was among a handful of startups launched to market EBT scans to patients willing to pay cash and to physicians who could make referrals.

Friedman opened his first centers in Los Angeles and Chicago, then expanded to Arlington Heights, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Washington. By 2008, however, the chain was foundering. Though its EBT machines were still considered best for cardiac scans, newer machines did other types of body scans better and more cheaply. Imaging centers proliferated. More than 4,400 CT centers nationwide are accredited by the American College of Radiology, and only about 50 of them have EBT machines, which are no longer in production.

Friedman shut down all but two Heart Check America locations. Then he was approached by Haddad.

Haddad said Heart Check America offered the chance to use his marketing skills to a more meaningful end. As a child, he had watched his aunt die of breast cancer at 33. Heart Check America's scans could help identify such diseases earlier, he said, giving patients a better chance at survival.

"If I'm going to sell alarm systems or time shares or carpets, I'd rather sell something I really believe in," he said.

Haddad struck a deal for his mother to purchase the company in 2009. He and his mother are listed as officers or managers on the company's corporate filings in various states, though its ownership shares are not public. Haddad said he supervises the company's sales and marketing.

According to Haddad, a separate investor group that includes Friedman also has a stake in the company. Neither he nor Friedman would describe its size.

Soon after Haddad took the helm, he told Friedman about his plan to direct-market 10-year service packages. Friedman said he told Haddad that might not be fair — or medically advisable.

"How can you know what test is going to be appropriate three years from now?" Friedman said. "How can you know this technology will be relevant or that this person will be a good candidate for it?"

Friedman said Haddad has "trashed" the strong reputation for Heart Check America he built during the 17 years he operated the company.

"You can't build a business for the long term … by misleading people," he said.

Haddad did not respond to questions about Friedman's comments.

Under Haddad's leadership, the company grew to eight centers in California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada and Washington, D.C. It also began using marketing techniques similar to those Haddad had used in his time-share businesses — calling consumers at home and offering them free heart scans if they listened to sales presentations.

It worked. Heart Check America administered about 60,000 free scans in 2010 alone, Haddad said. He wouldn't say how many scan recipients signed up for long-term contracts, but a report provided to ProPublica by a former Heart Check America employee shows that in a single week in November, 148 of about 600 people who attended the company's pitches signed contracts worth upward of $400,000 total.

In the last two years, Haddad said, Heart Check America has brought in about $30 million in sales revenue.

The company's sales push also triggered a spike in consumer complaints.

The Federal Trade Commission has received 681 complaints about Heart Check America since 2009, many of them alleging violations of the National Do Not Call Registry, which restricts telemarketing.

More than three dozen complaints about Heart Check America have been filed with the Better Business Bureau, most since the start of this year. The organization has given the company an F grade, based not only on the volume of problems but on the company's response to them.

Mark and Stephanie Sojka, of Bolingbrook, thought there was nothing to lose when they accepted a free offer from Heart Check America. But now they say they paid $995 for body scans they don't trust, and they can't get answers or a refund from the company.

"I'm mad at myself," said Stephanie Sojka. "I feel scammed."

When the Sojkas received an offer last summer for free heart scans, Mark was 39 and Stephanie was 35. They say that they thought they could benefit from a preventive checkup and that the scans might motivate them to get into better shape.

Plus, they reasoned, even if they attended a sales presentation, they were under no obligation to buy anything.

They didn't get around to doing the scans until Dec. 30, when a salesman tried to get them to sign a 10-year contract for $6,490 plus $299 a year in network fees. The Sojkas ultimately agreed to a one-time deal: $995 for scans of the heart, lungs, pelvis and abdomen.

Heart Check America promised to provide the results within 10 days, but a month went by and the couple had heard nothing. In February the Sojkas made three calls demanding a full refund and threatening to call the Illinois attorney general's office, before receiving their results Feb. 23.

The couple were surprised to find their reports were almost identical: According to the scans, they both have diverticulosis, an asymptomatic condition where pouches form in the wall of the colon; small hiatal hernias, where the stomach protrudes through a hole in the diaphragm; and no buildup of calcium in their arteries.

"If they had such a hard time getting a report to us, how do I know they didn't generate a template to get us off their back?" Stephanie Sojka asked.

Haddad did not respond to questions about the Sojkas' case but said the "handful" of complaints against Heart Check America were dwarfed by the praise the company has received from satisfied customers. "I've gotten hundreds of testimonials," he said.

Several experts agreed that heart scans of the type offered by Heart Check America were inappropriate for patients with a low risk of heart disease. EBT scans also are inappropriate for high-risk patients, for whom there are more effective assessment techniques, such as stress tests, doctors said.

No randomized controlled trials have been conducted that indicate that EBT scans can predict heart disease, said Dr. Virginia Moyer, chairwoman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine.

"The scientific evidence is just not there one way or another," she said.

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